History of

This year Mitchell Humphrey & Co. (MH&Co.) is celebrating 40 years of providing our clients with the answers to their information technology needs.

In the beginning, Mitch Humphrey had a vision. A vision of providing health care organizations with a way to respond to the rapidly increasing information demands facing their industry. Organizations had been utilizing decades-old systems and it was time for change.

Mitch’s first client was Vanderbilt University Medical Center, and many more would soon follow.

Mitch Humphrey visiting Vanderbilt University Medical Center.

If you ask him the secret to his success, his humble response would be that he was in the right place at the right time, but it is a very well-known fact there is really a lot more to it than that. With his background in public accounting, Mitch focused his efforts on creating a financial management system that was “Designed by Accountants for Accountants.” He rapidly discovered that his philosophy made FMS-80, our first release, a system that was desirable to organizations in a variety of industries. In addition to health care, first clients of MH&Co. consisted of a wide variety of organizations, including manufacturing, governmental, not-for-profit, service, and distribution.

Mitch’s conservative philosophy, in regards to customer service, was very attractive at a time when many organizations were attempting to move from in-house developed solutions. These solutions were tailored to their exact requirements. Finding a replacement was an arduous task. The problem for the organizations was that it was typically quite difficult and expensive to maintain these systems. Mitch saw early on that his software would need to be easily customized to meet specific client requirements – without modifying source code. This is a major benefit of our latest software, FMS III.

Not surprisingly, his first client, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, was exactly in that situation. They found out quickly there was no out-of-the-box solution that met their sophisticated needs. From the start, it was a match made in heaven. Vanderbilt was, in fact, very active in the initial design of the software.

Another fundamental philosophy that Mitch adhered to was to hire and retain outstanding people. For example, our current Senior Vice-President of Technology, Tom Wolpert, was one of the key original architects of the software. MH&Co. has many long-term employees like Tom who contribute to the success of our company. In fact, we have an average tenure of 13 years with over half of our employees having been with us for over 10 years.

There is another crucial element in the success of MH&Co. was Mitch’s business manager, Kathy Humphrey. Kathy handled all of the administrative aspects of the business so Mitch could focus on his entrepreneurial vision. Kathy Humphrey, with her attention to detail and commitment to excellence, provided the foundation upon which we operate today.

It is the words of Steve Forbes that can best describe Mitch and Kathy’s value system – “The real source of wealth and capital in this new era is not material things…it is the human mind, the human spirit, and human imagination, and our faith in the future.” This value system continues to live on at MH&Co. today in how we interact with our employees, our partners, and our clients.